Richard Fay

Biography

Profile: PhD (Education), MusM (Ethnomusicology), MEd TESOL, Dip.TEFLA, BA (Hons)

Equipped with a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature (from Jesus Colleage, University of Oxford) and teacher qualifications, I became a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) practitioner in the UK and overseas before a short spell in corpus-based lexicography at Birmingham University/COBUILD.

I then took my MEd TESOL  (1993) and this enabled my second career - as a language teacher educator for TESOL practitioners, based in the School of Education at Manchester since 1994. In this role, I developed specialisms in intercultural aspects of TESOL (e.g. _ Language Education as Intercultural Practice _) and intercultural education more generally, in (appropriate methodology for) distance education /elearning, and in _ Developing Researcher Competence _ (with a particular interest in Narrative Inquiry and researching multilingually ).

I also had the opportunity to forge strong links with educational projects in the  Balkans (especially Greece and Bulgaria). My doctoral studies (completed in 2004) focused on one such project, a 10-year collaboration between the University of Manchester and the Hellenic Open University  (HOU) through which the HOU developed its distance learning MA TEFL programme as based on courseware licensed from Manchester''s distance learning MA TESOL programme.

Most recently, I have become involved in the development of undergraduate courses broadly in the area of global citizenship/intercultural communication including _ Computer-Mediated Intercultural Communication _ and _ Global Citizenship and Sustainability _.  I also supervise doctoral students using narrative methods to explore broadly intercultural topics.

Finally, my own studies continued recently with a part-time MusM degree in  Ethnomusicology (graduated Decemeber 2011). My dissertation focused on the various perceptions on the Cretan lyra. Thus, on the one hand, I explored the understandings of a number of contemporary players and, on the other, I explored the ethnomusicological literature on this instrument, a literature which largely dates from the 1980s/early 1990s. The genesis of this study lies in my experience of a disjuncture between these two sets of perceptions, with a partucular concern for the topic of musical identity and gendered musical performance vis-a-vis the lyra.

Further information

Additional Information

Main Teaching Interests

BA-level:

• Global Citizenship and Sustainability - part of the University College provision
• Intercultural Communication - part of the University College provision.

MA TESOL:

• Language Education as Intercultural Practice
• Developing Researcher Competence
• The use of Literary Texts in Language Education
• Dissertations on intercultural topics and using using narrative methods.

MA in Intercultural Communication (joint Programme Director)

• Introduction to Intercultural Communication
• Explorations in Intercultural Thinking
• Dissertations on intercultural topics

Additional Information

I was Programme Director for the MEd in English Language Teaching programme from 1997-2005 when it was renamed the MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). I was ERASMUS Co-ordinator for the School of Education from 2001 - 2011. I am now joint Programme Director for the MA in Intercultural Communication, as offered jointly by the Manchester Institute of Education and the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. I also jointly lead the Manchester Global Challange award for the University College for Interdisciplinary Learning.

International Experience

Argentina , Bulgaria, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uganda, Uruguay.

Currently engaging with

• citizenship education, global  citizenship and intercultural citizenship;
• continuing professional development of language teachers (TESOL)
• developing researcher competence (DRC)
• human rights education
• intercultural communication & intercultural education
• Ladino narratives (oral history)
• language teacher education (TESOL)
• narrative inquiry
• narrativity-reflexivity in research texts
• performing ethnomusicology (klezmer)
• reciprocal reflexivity in collaborative research
• researching multilingually

LANTERN

• Language Teacher Education Researcher Network (LANTERN)